Consider This from NPR - On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

Greenland is a lot more than an object of Donald Trump's territorial ambitions. It's a place whose small population is facing big questions – about climate change, economic development, and identity. Today we bring you a reporter's notebook, traveling with NPR's Juana Summers and her team through Greenland at a time of huge political uncertainty. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When you're on the road as a reporter, you're bound to pick up some local vernacular. There's this word that a woman that we met in Greenland told us it's called SILA, which means weather, but it also means like you can't control the weather, you just have to adapt around it. That, of course, is all things considered co-host Juana Summers. Last month, she and a team went to Greenland for a reporting trip and encountered a ton of SILA. One thing to know about traveling in Greenland is that there are not roads between the major towns and cities. So you've got to take these little small flights

on Air Greenland to get from place to place. One place they were trying to get to was a little town north of the Arctic Circle called Alulisat. But the SILA had other ideas. They had days of high winds and icy tarmacs. We were supposed to leave on a Thursday. No flight happens.

The next day we get up, we pack all our stuff, we get to the airport, we get on a plane, plane gets diverted, we land in a completely different part of Greenland. We're there for like a half hour or something like that. Back on the plane. The cycle plays out over and over again. Finally, I think this is on Sunday,

pack up all our stuff, leave the hotel, get on the plane again, plane gets diverted again to this place called Ossiat. Plays out over and over again. Finally, I think this is on Sunday. Pack up all our stuff, leave the hotel, get on the plane again. Plane gets diverted again to this place called Asiat. So we're now here at the Asiat airport in Greenland. On our way, we're attempting again for the third time to fly to Alulisat. We're gonna see if we're gonna make it.

And finally, after about two hours of sitting there and wondering what's gonna happen, this announcement comes over the loudspeaker. It is in either Greenlandic or Danish languages. I do not speak. I didn't have to understand those languages to know what was happening because everybody started cheering. And we actually made it four days later.

Understand that it seems like we're going to make an attempt to fly to Alulisat. I don't know if you can hear the crowd got pretty excited. What was Lulisat like when you finally got there? What did it look like? I mean it's one of the most stunning places I've ever visited. It's this sort of scenic, beautiful tourist town. It's a place where lots of people go to set out and see the icebergs, to take boat tours. All of the houses are super colored. There's beautiful snow scapes and I think the thing that sticks with me is the fact that you can just hear

the sled dogs howling all the time. Like even before you see them, you can hear them. And then when you see them, they're also pretty darn cute. Consider this. Greenland is a lot more than an object of Donald Trump's territorial ambitions. It is a place whose small population is facing big questions about climate change, economic development, and identity. So today we are bringing you a reporter's notebook traveling through Greenland with Juana Summers and her team at a time of huge political uncertainty. From NPR, I'm Scott Tetra. When you take a shower or get ready in the morning, how many products are you using?

Everything from your shampoo to your lotion. In our study, we found that the average woman used about 19 products every day and the average man used about seven. These products might come at a cost. The ingredients they contain can be harmful to our health. Listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR to learn more about the risks of personal care products. It's Consider This from NPR.

Wanda Summers and her team initially went to Greenland because of the bold claims President Donald Trump has made about taking it over. But it is a place with a lot more to cover than political jostling. So today for our Weekly Reporter's Notebook segment, we are on the road in Greenland and we will start in that little town north of the Arctic Circle, Alulisat. So we did this story and this is something I wouldn't have thought about before we started researching this trip about the intersection of dog sledding and climate change. So we

actually got to go out with this woman who's a dog sled musher named Stella. And when she took us out, she kind of warned us, you know, we don't have a lot of snow right now. It's actually pretty hot here. And when we don't have as much snow, it's harder for the dogs to pull. I think we've righted things. They're picking up speed again. And we're kind of looking out in front of us and you can see some snow, but there's

like also these stretches of just sort of rough terrain there are rocks and moss and we just went across a pretty big rock. It's kind of brown looking so we're seeing this in real time and that is definitely the case when we took off on this dog sled like it just there wasn't enough snow in some stretches which meant that we were getting off the dog sled at times and running alongside of it. Had you dog sledded before in your life? Nope. How would you say you were as a dog sledder? I would like to say that I'm very good at following directions.

I think it helps that like you, I'm a runner. Running alongside of it, I was definitely looking at my garment like, man, maybe I should have started my garment. My heart rate is really up. Just get on. Just get on. Easier said than done. Before we talk about the other topics, what, for people who didn't hear the piece, what is the general

feeling, though, of people whose livelihood depends on this tourism industry, depends on snow, when north of the Arctic Circle in February, snow is a problem? Yeah, I think it touches every part of life there. When we talk to Stella, the woman who took us out with the dog sleds, or when we talked with a man named Jan Kortsen, who took us out on his boat to the icebergs, there is a concern.

These are people who have lived in Greenland their whole lives. And they're pointing to these tangible examples every day of how climate has affected them. And the other thing that we heard from them, and particularly from Jan Kortsen, is these are all people who depend on tourism, right? They want more people to come to this small town

of fewer than 5,000 people, to go on their dog sleds, to go out on their boats, but they wanna make sure that as Greenland opens up more to the world, the island has invested a ton of money in new airports and stuff, they want that money to stay locally rather than to benefit outside operators. And that's a really big tension in the small town that we went to, too. Speaking of outsiders, President Trump wants to acquire Greenland.

This is something you as a reporter want to learn about. But you are also an American coming in from an American news outlet to talk to people about this. How were you received? We were pretty well received. One thing that we were warned about from people that we were talking to in pre-interviews is that there was just a lot of fatigue around international journalists and American journalists. You could really see that. I mean, as we were walking around Nuke in particular, we saw

tons of other journalists, several other big US outlets were there at the same time we were there. People were nice, but people were pretty over it at times. I'll give you just one super visual example. We did a story where we asked people what they thought about President Trump's ambitions and how they felt about if that were to come to pass, potentially becoming a part of the US. And we went to a place called Nuke Center,

which is like the biggest mall in Greenland. And we're standing there at the doors, and we're just like sitting there asking people, hey, do you wanna talk to us? Hey, can I ask you a question about President Trump? And at one point things got so bleak that I was actually sitting there tallying in my notepad How many people said no and how many people said yes and we got more than a dozen nos before we even got one Yes, and we only got one

I've been in situations like that where you're going into a community that has just been inundated by reporters. And I found myself that like I don't even get the syllables of reporter out before. I'm a rep. Nope. Like I'm a real stop. Yeah. Nope.

Like, or they could just tell by the body language as you come up that you're but then eventually you were able to make connections. You were able to get people to talk about this. Did you find like a wide range? You know, you talk about it's a diverse place, but also it's a place with, you were able to make connections, you were able to get people to talk about this. Did you find like a wide range? You talk about it's a diverse place, but also it's a place with 57,000 people total. What was the mix of opinions on this strange situation Greenland finds itself in? Well, on this topic, people were actually pretty uniform. There was a poll that came out shortly before we arrived in Greenland, and the stat was

pretty striking to us. Just 6% of Greenlanders said that they wanted their island to become part of the United States. Just 6%. That really bore itself out as we were going around and talking to people. The thing that sticks in my mind that I kept hearing over and over and over again from people is they would say, Greenland is not for sale. That is something that Greenland's prime minister has said. That is something that's been echoed by Denmark's prime minister because Greenland, of course, is an autonomous territory of Denmark. That just was the thing that people kept coming back to. It is very clear that they don't want to be taken over.

I think someone told us at one point, we don't want another colonizer. I'm paraphrasing here a bit. But I will say we did meet one sort of very big Trump superfan, this guy named Jorgen Bosen. He actually helped orchestrate Don Jr., President Trump's son's visit to Greenland that happened I think a little bit before the inauguration. And what's interesting about him and listening to him when we sat down with him is that even he didn't come out and say that he wanted the U.S. to acquire the island, he made the

case that he wants to see Greenland enter what's called a free association agreement with the United States. So he wants to see the United States provide economic support, military support, defense support. But he kind of stopped short of saying that he wanted to be part of this country. He did not say that he wants to be American. What do you... Like, I feel like when we're going on a reporting trip, we do a ton of research.

We've done a ton of prep before we go, figuring out what we want to talk about, who we want to talk to, but just also like the basics of the story, because you don't want to walk in blind. And yet there are always really big surprises. Like what was most surprising to you about this trip and what was something that maybe you thought about, I didn't quite

grasp this idea at all or I had it a little bit wrong when I was thinking about it from afar? The thing that surprised me the most was how challenging it would be to get people to talk. I knew the influx of journalists would be there and I know they had had so much attention. On these trips, you know, you pre-plan so much, you do pre-interviews, you send emails, but like that's just not the way that things happen there. It's very much an island where the best interviews we got, I think were by way of introduction of someone else,

the people who really stuck with me the most, were people that we were introduced to, either by our fixer, Yona, that we worked with, or by other people that we had met. The word of mouth currency was just so much more important. When I told most people in my life, like outside of our business, hey, I'm going to Greenland for this trip, most people came in with the baseline of knowing nothing about this island. And I think that that's really flat in the culture in some ways. So we were

really intentional about doing stories. Yes, we talked about President Trump's ambitions, but we also talked about dog sledding. We also went to a kayak club and watched the construction of traditional Greenlandic kayakers. We sat down with an award-winning Greenlandic chef who talked to us about indigenous cuisine and the food landscape there. So I think for me, what was most enriching was trying to open up those other parts of Greenland to a U.S. audience that really hasn't given this place and its people and its history, like, much consideration. Well, Anna Summers, thank you so much for talking to us.

Thanks, Scott. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and Matt Ozug. It was edited by Adam Ramey, Ashley Brown, and Courtney Dornig. Our executive producer is Sammy Gannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detro.